Survival to Success: Small Business Strategies in the AI Era.
This study focuses on how small businesses or so called “SME- Small Medium Enterprises” can
transition from surviving to thriving in this new era of rapid technology change by artificial
intelligence (AI). Small Business operates in an environment where AI adoption mainly focuses
on large enterprises and overlooks small and medium sized firms. Different surveys show that
over 80% of small business owners believe AI is essential to remain competitive, tool for scale
up and move to the next level while simultaneously facing high costs, skills shortages, and
uncertainty about return on investment. Also most small businesses tend to ignore technology
advancements and Artificial intelligence.
This study will explore how small businesses can move from AI “survival” mode to sustain
“success” by integrating AI into core strategies rather than treating it as a stand‑alone technology
project or treat it as a tool for large enterprises.
The key challenges faced by Small Businesses, including limited technical expertise, resource
constraints, and uncertainty about the ethical and workforce implications. To address these
challenges small businesses should focus on adopting of low-cost AI solutions which will help
the small businesses to address the challenges that are facing such as inadequate supply of goods
and services whereby they can get recommendations on what to do, how to do it, invest in digital
upskilling alot of small businesses are faced with limited digital skills now with this AI era it's
important to invest into digital skills across the business function teams. Research and
development plays a key role I believe any organization that is looking to thrive must have a
culture of research through experimentation of different solutions and this is overlook whereby
its considered to be a large organization function but even small organizations needs to
experiment this is the only way they can differentiate themselves with other and they can scale
up, now with AI adoptions small business have a good chance of thriving through partnership
with AI tools to support them in experimentation of solutions, products and services.
Mwinyiusi Mwambereko Hamza
Student ID: 2511037